


The Hurricane and the Bird

by dreamyemptysouls



Series: HSWC 2014 [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, HSWC MR1 entry, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, PTSD discussion, The Other One, gif, trigger discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1913196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamyemptysouls/pseuds/dreamyemptysouls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes all you need is a tiny nudge, a tiny change in perspective, to reap the biggest rewards in your life. When Jade binds you to a promise, you're forced to review all you know about Davesprite, and how that affects how you behave towards him. Can you ever become his friend? Or are you bound to be enemies in the end?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hurricane and the Bird

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Main Round 1 of HSWC 2014. The prompt was Butterfly Effect.

You have seen this happen before, countless times. The tiny breeze or sigh that brings the whole house of cards down. The nudge to that one domino that starts a chain reaction that ends up in either tragedy or art. Someone yells "Jenga!" when the smallest placement mistake collapses the tower, a butterfly flaps its wings and a hurricane forms on the other side of the world.

  
To Jade, the last drop on her patience was an argument, insults you yelled at him the moment you finally found him after your birthday.

  
Today you blush at the memory of the words, in shame, in regret. It's hard to point at that John - even if he's only one year younger than you - and to say with certainty, "that is me". But all things considered, not much changed at all.

  
Just Jade getting fed up with the way you always bickered with him, and in turn, how he always edged you on, with a fake smug smile and impassive posture. She's always known the both of you better than anyone, so she knew you weren't really angry with him breaking up with her, or missing your birthday. Just as she knew he wasn't really aloof, or completely impervious to your words.

  
And as you made her yell louder than you, you both watched her leave, steps echoing in the golden halls of the ship. You snarled at him one last time, blaming him for this turn of events, before you followed your sister.

  
She was fuming inside the food pantry, and she scared you sometimes, with how feral she had become after Bec merged with her. You knew you had screwed up when she was like this, and you were quick to apologize. Her shout made the cans of food shake in their shelves. You knew better than to argue with her - so you listened instead.

  
You wanted to be angry with her too, for trying to defend someone who had wronged her in this way. But then the need to appease her was greater, so you found yourself bound to a promise.

  
"You want to apologize to me?? Well, that's easy! I just want you to do ONE thing."

  
"Okay..."

  
"No more THIS. No more yelling, or arguments, or explosions. From now on, if you have nothing nice to say to him, then you say nothing! If you don't, then I swear I'll trap each of you in your own planets for the rest of this trip!!"

  
"Ugh, that's fucking unfair! Have you told him to stop being a douchebag?? Because he's clearly the one messing everything up, not me!"

  
"John, I'm not saying another word. I'm tired. If I see you being mean, if I HEAR YOU yelling again, I'll do it. Now please get out."

  
Now it was you channeling her anger as you stormed outside. It was unfair to be punished like this, and she had to know it. But still, if that's what she wanted, then that's what she'd get.

  
You had nothing nice to say to either of them then, so you just went to your room and stayed there.

  
\------

  
"Do you really hate me that much?"

  
It's part of human nature, to resist even the smallest changes, and god if you weren't practicing the pettiest traits of your humanity right now.

  
Over the next few days, you kept to Jade's promise more over spite than anything else. The Actual Culprit was clueless about all of this, and as he kept prattling on during mealtimes, your silence was obviously confusing him, as you pointedly ignored him, hands and face tense.

  
You could tell that this wasn't getting the results she had hoped for. You would talk to her in his presence, eyes defiant and smile smug, but it was as if he were invisible to you. And he started to catch on.

  
One day, he stopped trying to provoke you. One day, finding you in one of the corridors - away from Jade - he actually dropped the smug act, showing a softer, more vulnerable, almost human part of him, that actually caught you by surprise.

  
You stopped in your tracks and turned to face him.

  
"What?" you had to control yourself, not to let your voice get too loud.

  
"Do you? The yelling, your fucking sour attitude towards me every day, and now the brick silence? You have to know it hurts, right? So that has to be it, you really fucking hate my guts."

  
You heaved a long sigh, opening and closing your fists to calm down. You had to finally tell him like it was, but you couldn't yell. So you grumbled instead.

  
"I'm... sick of you trying to pretend you're him. You float in with your dumb jokes and your orange face and wings, and hey, we can tell you're trying so hard, but it's not working. The /real/ Dave wouldn't walk out on Jade like that. He wouldn't miss my birthday, or fake my Dad's notes. You just do your act, do your bird stuff, and then sit there looking at empty space, like someone forgot to program what you're supposed to be doing most of the time. You're nothing. You're just a sprite. Hating you would be a compliment."

  
His face - his whole posture - changed so subtly, into such a perfect copy of deep hurt, that it almost fooled you. You almost wanted him to retaliate, to defend himself and prove you wrong, but he did no such thing. As usual, he just hovered away. You walked back to your room, convincing yourself that you were right.

  
That night, you wanted to be angry at him, but you found that his wounded face was the only thing you could think of. There was a horrible, sickening feeling pooling in the pit of your stomach, but it couldn't be guilt because you hadn't been wrong. An orange feather was resting on your pillow. You took it in your hand and crumbled it to rags.

  
\----

  
"I need to talk to you..."

  
Ever since your last encounter with him, no one but you ever dwelled in the "common room" of the ship anymore. The silence made you restless, no matter how much you inwardly argued that you needed the peace and quiet. Jade sometimes came over for meals, but Dave sprite had been sparse for days. Good fucking riddance.

  
Getting a visit from Jade at this time, especially when she looked like you had killed someone, was never a good sign.

  
"Let me guess. It's about Dave sprite."

  
She sighed.

  
"John, how much do you know about him?"

  
"I don't know. That he's half bird? Also a ghost? That he likes to pretend he's someone who he isn't?? Do you want me to go on?"

  
She sat by the table across from you, and you could tell that more than angry, she was... disappointed in you.

  
"I... I don't understand how you can still think that way. But you know what, I am not gonna stand here and see him take this, just because he wants to protect you and not tell you a thing. As much as you don't want to see it, he IS Dave. He's Dave after you died, because he couldn't stop you from flying to your own death. He's Dave after /I/ died, because I couldn't make it into the game without you. He saw Rose become an alcoholic, because all they had left to do was to wait for their own death. For months, he thought he'd never see any of us again, not until he found out he had time powers. And even then he had to wait to come back and save us, in that place where everyone he loved was dying, because he wanted to bring as much information with him as he could.

  
How dare you call him 'just a sprite'? How dare you treat him like crap, just because he isn't exactly like the Dave you imagine in your head? Do you have any idea of what he goes through?

  
How would YOU feel, if all that had happened to you? How do you feel, ever since your Dad died? If anything related to how any of your friends died made you go through that all over again? And then after such a long time wanting to come back, he finally gets to see you, and you treat him like this.

  
You should feel ashamed of yourself. I love you John, and you'll always be my brother. I appreciate that you worry about me, and that you admire 'The Real Dave' so much. But this isn't okay. You could have been friends. Jeez, God knows he needs those. But now, I don't even know what to do with you anymore. So just... stop upsetting him. He doesn't deserve it."

  
Throughout her speech, that dreadful feeling kept pooling in your gut, and this time you didn't have the nerve to fight it.

  
"... I... I had never thought of it like that before."

  
"No, you didn't. You chose to dehumanize the closest thing you had to your best friend instead, and to actually make him believe you. But now you know, about all that, and probably about why he broke up with me, and wouldn't be in your birthday. And I have nothing else to say to you..."

  
She got up and you heard her step away, into the ship's deck, but before she left, you made one last attempt at piecing the image you had left of him together.

  
"You said... 'could have been his friend'. So there's probably no way that's gonna happen now, huh?"

She managed a smile.

  
"That depends on you. He never saw you as an enemy."

  
After she left and all that was there was silence, you got even more fidgety than before. The guilt filled the silence with its own noise, ominous whispers telling you, there was no way you could avoid this any longer.

  
Faced with this truth, dismissing it would be cowardice, and unfair to him.

  
Jade was right, nothing would change if you didn't make it so yourself. Your dad had always taught you to be brave, to face the consequences of your actions head on, and fix your mistakes.

  
There's no need for miracles when your actions could turn butterfly wings into hurricanes.

  
\----

  
"I'm sorry."

  
Your father's lessons resonated in you now, but this was the most important. That apologies weren't about you, about clearing your consciousness. They were about owning up to your wrongs, and to assure the other that now you understood them a little better. They were also a promise of behavior, that you'd change.

  
Dave sprite's - no, Dave's - eyes widened even behind his shades.

  
"What? You're resorting to pranks now? That's kinda low, dude."

  
"Augh... I know that it might come across that way, but it's not a prank. I am genuinely apologizing now. It's been brought to my attention, how much of an ass I've been, and I'm ashamed of myself... I'll do better now."

  
He was doing it again, that thing where he didn't even bother putting up a mask. All vulnerable, all human, it was easy to see his raw skepticism, and you didn't even think you deserved to feel hurt by that. Just guilty.

  
But you were still owning up to these mistakes, upgrading your promise. You reached a hand out for him to hold. He did it tentatively, taking care to fold his talons so he wouldn't hurt you. You shook his hand, and said nothing else.

  
He was just as silent, but you could swear there was a slightly new perk to his composure.

  
\---

  
There was no one better than the Heir of Breath to build up a whirlwind from a breeze.

  
Redeeming yourself was no easy task, after all the wrong things you had done regarding him, but if you never set yourself to change that, then you'd only have yourself to blame later.

  
Jade's first speech still haunted you in great detail, and you were left to wonder how much you had misunderstood of his actions, how much you had turned a blind eye to, of all his foreign habits, but most importantly, what could you do to help him?

  
With this in mind, you started reexamining your whole routine - taking deeper focus on his - and trying to understand why he acted the way he did - the way you had been so used to blame on him defacing Dave's image, when all along something deeper and darker streamed underneath.

  
At first, whenever he did something you didn't understand, you asked him why. But it soon became clear that it was obviously upsetting him, so you decided to be more tactful about it, and Jade was the best person to ask instead.

  
You had never before dared to imagine that his life was this complicated.

  
Talon hands were such an inconvenience, for handling simple tools, for eating, for the smallest of touches.

Wings couldn't fit anywhere without five minutes worth of synchronized folding, feathers getting messy and falling, and bandages got stuck in the corners of counters or on doors.

  
And then there were his triggers, harmless things to you or her, but shortcuts for him to be trapped in a certain memory. The repeated clinking of metal, the scent of alcohol or smoke, bright green lights, those were enough to make him hyperventilate on the spot. Ticking clocks would make him fidget and if you or Jade accidentally cut yourselves, all expression would be drained from his face.

  
At first, whenever something like this happened, you had learned to let him go somewhere safe where he could calm down, but you wanted to learn too. You learned all about panic attacks, and the consequences of trauma, and you learned to be with him through all those things, to be exactly what he needed, give him all the ingredients he used to heal. 

  
It was humbling, to see how much you had missed in the past, to think of how much harm you must have caused yourself. Sometimes you had to fold his wings around him and squeeze him tight, humming softly so he'd know he wasn't alone and wouldn't accidentally use his own talons to hurt himself. You found yourself crying the one time you slipped and let that happen, and you were both so surprised to see the tears in your eyes as you bandaged his arms.

  
But not everything was sad and dark.

  
His sense of humor was still there - albeit slightly more morbid - and when you started to spend more time together, he'd sit between Jade and you while you watched TV, and he'd look so pleased if you started grooming his feathers for him. When he taught you how to do the whole wing routine and you found out about the birdie sounds, you could swear he would almost murder you.

  
You spent a long time in the alchemizer, combining tools with other ingredients (plastic and not metal!), coming up with a whole new set of utensils that Dave could use even with the talons. He even ended up custom designing them himself, with a wide smile and true excitement in his eyes, and it was amazing to see, how little it took to turn him into a complete dork.

  
His wing problem was easy to fix too: all Jade had to do was make the door frames bigger with her witch powers.

  
You soon found out that he didn't sleep anymore, but it didn't stop him from wanting to. He'd get lonely and bored at night, and instead of spending them by himself now, he took to the habit of invading your room. You'd wake up startled to a pile of fluff perching on your covers, until you got used to it, and couldn't actually sleep unless he was there. You'd blink your blurry sight away, and only after an invitation would he slip under the covers with you, wings like the wall of a tent, eyes shimmering yellow without the cover of shades. Forgetting your pillow, you'd sleep on his neck ruff instead, and you you almost see the smile on his face as he wound his arms around you.

  
You learned so much about him, over the course of just a couple of months.

  
You now understood, why Jade fell for him.

  
You knew how hard you were falling too.

  
... even if not in the same way.

  
\---

  
You were fiddling with your bowtie for the nth time in the last five minutes, even if your talons did more harm than help. Jade laughed and put it together herself. You sighed.

  
"You're nervous," she expertly noted.

  
"You think? I've never been on a fancy date before... And John... what if I mess up and he... goes back to how he was before?"

  
She was smoothing out your vest now, giggling.

  
"It's a PALE date. And you know pretty well that's not gonna happen. You changed him, for good."

  
"It's still as important to me as any other date... Troll shit is so confusing too, I have no idea how I'm gonna deal with that."

  
She hugged you instead of arguing on, and as you hugged her back, that was probably the best way to calm you.

  
"Everything's going to be alright, Dave. By the look of him, he probably just wants to spoil you rotten."

  
You couldn't help but chuckle.

  
"Just a while ago, he hated my guts. Funny how things turn out, huh?"

  
"He just needed a nudge in the right direction. Now off you go!"

  
You obeyed, but you lingered at the threshold.

  
"Thanks for everything, Jade. And I'm... sorry if I was an ass to you too."

  
"It's okay. And I'm honestly glad that everything turned out like this."

  
You hoped you smiled back at her, though you couldn't be sure, in the state of nerves you were in. You navigated the ship using the map he handcrafted himself, the gigantic dork, but in all honesty, all you had to do was follow the noise.

  
As soon as you reached the giant deck in the middle of the ship, you were face to face with a consort party.

  
They did this sometimes, for no given reason, and it was the most amusing thing to see, how four different species, all with their own culture, myths, customs and languages, mingled together in this interplanetary reptilian-amphibian gathering. Most were dancing, some were singing, and you even saw Casey the Salamander and Shaun the Turtle randomly plucking at Jade's old electric bass - rest in pieces. A lot of consorts were across the deck, eating, and amongst them was John.

  
You hovered through the crowd, admiring your friend already from afar. He had obviously spent some time with the alchemizer, to make that waistcoat of his, all baby blue with the Breath crest - like you had done with a regular waistcoat and some of your feathers. He beamed when he saw you, and you couldn't help but smile in return. The nerves were mostly gone.

  
He greeted you with a hug, and you let it linger, right until you saw how much amazing food was on the table. He giggled as he watched you eat with no restraint, and the rest of the nerves left you.

  
The date passed in a breeze - and it wasn't much different from a regular time together with him, except with suits and fancier food. John took you dancing to the middle of the crowd, and the consorts cheered for you. He fed you dessert and made you chase Casey with him, and as soon as the poor consorts started falling to the ground, tired from all the partying, he took your hand and led you up, all the way to the crows' nest.

  
You leant on the railing, and soon enough he had his arms around you, nuzzling your neck. It was a nice view from up here, golden streams like stars crossing the sky in this place between places, and sometimes it felt as if they were moving too fast. You turned to hug him properly, his arms around your waist, before you placed your hands gently on his jaw.

  
You had seen him grow from a boy to a prelude of a man in these years, and you were genuinely glad, to be part of his life, now that he had changed. Somewhat nervous himself, he leant forward to kiss your cheek, and you were suddenly very aware that this was a date. You pressed your forehead to his, closing your eyes, before you nestled on the golden floor, beckoning at him to join you.

  
Star-streams hovered above you, and he held his hand in yours. There were several minutes of comfortable silence, while you let your skin do the talking - in a way that apparently was common for trolls to use in this sort of relationship. Each small kiss he pressed to your face, each brush his fingers drew on your neck or feathers, was soothing and bright, sparked something in you that made you feel alive, and in return, you hoped you ignited something similar in him, a tender flame in his soul.

  
You were both kind of nervous, and you chuckled if you messed up, as you tried to figure out your own language on palemance pieced together from the gestures of so many cultures (not unlike the consorts!). You were suddenly looking forward to all moments like these you would have together in the future - picturing his reaction if you kissed his neck, or nuzzled his stomach - something you hadn't done in a long, long time, and that only made you more alive right now.

  
When you were back to looking at the stars once more, he spoke softly.

  
"You know, I'm... I'm so in love with you. I'm so stupid for letting it take this long to realize it... but I don't want to let go of it ever... I want to make you ridiculously happy. I want to keep the bad things away, no one deserves that more than you..."

  
His face was pink, sapphire eyes standing out and hair a mess after your hands had been on it, and he looked like a galaxy all by himself. You squeezed his hand gently in yours, mindful of the talons.

  
"I'm so glad that you became my whole world. Hell, I still can't believe this is really happening, I feel as if something will wake me up at any moment. But I really hope it won't."

  
"When we get to the new session... I'm scared of what's waiting there, I'm scared of what they can do to us. They took Rose's mom... and my Dad and... But I think it's gonna be alright. And now I have someone I have to protect at all costs."

  
Nothing scared you more than the end of this journey, but now it was better, knowing that there would always be room for you. You papped his face with your free hand.

  
"I'll protect you too. That's my first reason for living anyway."

  
You didn't know if the happy tears in your face were yours or his, as he leant in to kiss your nose.

  
No one woke you from this dream, and as you pushed yourself up to hold him closer, you hoped this would be so, over and over again, the hurricane raging on.

 


End file.
